US officials on Thursday sought to reinforce the threat of possible military action against North Korea after US President Donald Trump’s top strategist Steve Bannon essentially called his warnings a bluff.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said after security talks with Japan that the US seeks a peaceful solution to the standoff over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, but added that a US-led campaign of economic pressure and diplomacy needs to be militarily backed.
Tillerson spoke after he and US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis held annual security talks with Japanese Minister of Defense Itsunori Onodera and Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Kono.
Both Cabinet members sought to rebut Bannon’s claim even though they did not address it directly.
Mattis said that if North Korea launches a missile toward Japan, Guam, the US or South Korea, “we would take immediate, specific actions to take it down.”
North Korea’s missile launches “must stop immediately,” Tillerson said.
“That is the message the president has wanted to send to the leadership of North Korea, to remind the regime of what the consequences for them would be if they chose to carry out those threats,” Tillerson said.
Bannon’s comments in his interview with the American Prospect appeared to call bluff on Trump’s tough talk to North Korea last week.
“Until somebody solves the part of the equation that shows me that 10 million people in Seoul don’t die in the first 30 minutes from conventional weapons, I don’t know what you’re talking about, there’s no military solution here, they got us,” Bannon was quoted as saying.
Bannon also called for a tougher US stance on trade with China, saying the two powers were in an “economic war,” and talked about purging rivals from the defense and state departments to advance a more hawkish policy.
He named the acting top US diplomat for East Asia, Susan Thornton, as one official he wanted out.
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